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Hearing loss is rarely sudden or total, unless you are exposed to an exceptionally loud noise or head trauma. It’s usually gradual—sometimes so gradual that your family and friends may notice the problem before you do.
Here are 10 questions to help determine whether you (or a loved one) should have your hearing tested:
Do you have difficulty hearing over the telephone?
Do you have trouble following the conversation when two or more people are talking at the same time?
Do people complain that you turn the TV volume up too high?
Do you have to strain to understand conversation?
Do you have trouble hearing in a noisy background?
Do you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves?
Do the people you talk to seem to mumble or speak unclearly?
Do you misunderstand what others are saying frequently?
Do you have trouble understanding soft speech or voices?
Are people frequently annoyed due to your misunderstanding of what was said?
If you answered yes to three or more of these questions, schedule a professional hearing evaluation with a hearing healthcare professional.
More Resources
As a teacher of the deaf in New York City, I can see that as easy as it was for me to “pick up” language, for our children with hearing loss this is not the case. It’s quite the opposite. Children with hearing loss miss out on learning language incidentally on a daily basis, even with their hearing devices.
Ten years ago, I embarked on a mission to support children with hearing loss. These kids are often one of the few, if not the only, children with hearing loss in their mainstream schools. My goal was to connect them with other kids like themselves and introduce them to inspiring role models who also have hearing loss.
There are a lot of people with hearing loss out there. We need to come together to tell the world how to accommodate our needs, and why. If we stay silent, we cannot expect anything to improve.
A challenge in studying hair cell regeneration has been creating consistent and reliable ways to damage hair cells in laboratory mice. Overcoming this limitation, we developed a more uniform and effective method for hair cell death using the surgical delivery of a sisomicin antibiotic solution directly into the mouse inner ear.
Bruna’s diagnosis at age 9 months is Usher syndrome type 1B. It is a rare disease, a recessive inherited disease that we, her parents, had given to her. It is a disease that we had bypassed, but not our daughter.
Reaching out, learning about different organizations, and continuing to learn everything I can has made huge differences.
The deaf–hearing couples who are happy tend to have higher levels of tolerance for differences. They are more open to unconventional ways of coping, communicating, and problem solving.
Independence Day is a celebration of our country’s birthday, and we’re so grateful for the service of our active members of the military and veterans—who are, as we know, disproportionately affected by hearing loss and tinnitus. But now evidence is emerging of additional, severe brain injuries affecting service members.
These experiences highlight the need for patients, especially women, to advocate for accurate diagnoses.
The inventor of today’s recording techniques—with multiple ways to manipulate sound—would have been 109 this June 9. That would be Les Paul, the man whose signature is blazoned on the famous Gibson guitar.
Even with this elevated awareness about the harm from excess noise, sometimes it’s hard to get this message to stick at home. Here is how I helped steer my kids, who are now teenagers, steer toward healthy hearing habits.
The material on this page is for general information only and is not intended for diagnostic or treatment purposes. A doctor or other healthcare professional must be consulted for diagnostic information and advice regarding treatment.
For people with hearing loss, a lack of assistive listening devices in an auditorium is as much a barrier to enjoyment of a performance as a steep flight of stairs would be to someone with a mobility disorder.